Basu: LeeMan's new kidney shows good comes to those doing good

Nov. 26, 2013

'LeeMan' Furgerson

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Des Moines drummer Lee “LeeMan” Furgerson got a new shot at life this month. The 51-year-old’s kidneys had failed, his blood pressure had shot up and the diabetes that ultimately took his father’s life was doing a job on him. His only long-term hope, doctors said, was a kidney transplant. But it could be months or years before a donor came through.

Just one short month later, one did — a bittersweet reprieve provided by a stranger’s wish to have his own death help someone else live. The day after a car crash claimed the life of the 28-year-old organ donor from Missouri on Nov. 16, his kidney was working inside Furgerson’s body.

Some would say it was the work of God. Others would call it random luck that the kidney recipient on Iowa’s registry that day had the same blood type. Then there’s a third way of looking at it that is rational but refutes the notion of pure randomness: Do good and good will come back to you. After all, the more organ donors there are, the greater the likelihood one will be available when someone you love needs one.

A three-state, five person kidney swap in August that included New Jersey, Minnesota and Iowa proved that premise. The donors wanted to give their kidneys to loved ones who needed them, but were the wrong matches. So they formed a kind of web in which everyone donated a kidney or got one.

LeeMan’s family can’t pass this favor forward. His mother, Penny, was told she’s too old to donate a kidney and his two brothers are also diabetic. But the family has for decades been giving back more than its share by building a kind of caring, sharing global village of strangers.

Penny, originally from India, met her African-American husband, Lee, in Des Moines in the late 1950s when she was at pharmacy school and he was at Iowa State University. They were active in civil rights and wanted to use the arts to connect cultures and build social change. They formed the Gateway Dance Theater, which fuses African, Indian classical and modern American styles. The dances are often infused with social messages about peace, identity or a modern twist on “no room at the inn.”

LeeMan was born with a developmental disability and struggled with learning, writing and speaking. But with his parents’ guidance and support, he found his voice in drumming. With a pure, innocent sweetness and a smile that lights up a room, he has helped children of privilege and poverty find their voices by teaching them to drum. He currently volunteers teaching drum lessons at Moulton elementary and middle school and drums for his mother’s performances and classes, which are open to anyone regardless of ability to pay.

I’ve known the Furgerson familyfor close to two decades and have witnessed how their door is always open and the music and stove are always on. Hospitable to a fault, they once took in a visiting lab technician from Trinidad who had come to work at the clinic where Penny worked, though their small house already held seven. She stayed with them for over a month, sharing a bed with Penny’s grandmother. When South African jazz pianist Witness Matlou was studying at Drake University and had no place to go for the holidays, they invited him to stay. He and LeeMan played music together.

Hospitality was a tradition carried down from earlier generations. When, in the 1940s, some Iowa hotels barred black people, LeeMan’s grandparents in Waterloo opened their home to actor-singer Paul Robeson and eventual NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, among others. This may, ultimately, explain why LeeMan’s body became the host for a stranger’s kidney. Because for this family, there simply are no strangers.

On the day after LeeMan’s surgery, his irrepressible mother sneaked away from his bedside to tend to an event she’s been hosting every year: A thanks-giving gathering called Breaking Bread Together at which everyone is welcome, soup and dessert are served, and people are invited to bring bread from their cultures to share. Penny could rue the bad fortune that gave both her husband and son serious medical problems. But she’s too busy being grateful for the reprieves, and building her own little utopian society in which people care for each other. Now she’s planning a dance and music event to promote organ donations.

“Our deepest and sincerest gratitude to the person (and their family) who chose to be an organ donor and provide life to another human being,” it says on her company’s website. And then it offers ways to help survivors of Typhoon Haiyan.

So here’s a reminder, at a time when the world sorely needs one, that the pure, unselfish good that people do comes back in unexpected ways. Happy Thanksgiving.